The idea vs. having a bite (The path of inner alchemy)

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I was reading this philosophical post about mental understanding and the importance of the mind concepts only. What I believe that is overlooked here is this focus on head “enlightenment”. The mind can actually be the biggest obstacle to real knowledge/perception. It’s a collective belief about how our thinking is the most important tool and that mental knowing will make us smarter and therefore how much we will gain through intellectual discernment etc. We can have all the knowledge in the world, but we can’t hide from that which is inside.

Understanding; meaning “standing-under” something, that is even more tangible and expressive.

And this is most evident when it comes to the spiritual inner experiences of an individual.We need to acknowledge that this is not about being critical or negative in any way, but that all of that is a byproduct that comes along with some practices or it can happen out of curiosity, although it may even occur spontaneously. Unquestionably it’s a path of many who are willing to explore the depths of their own psyche. It’s a process of transformation and whatever comes up in it is a necessity and essential, but should end in a harmonious way and true wholeness!

In some way we could say that a spiritual path is there to seduce us and prepare us for something much more powerful. Of course we have to take into consideration that every person on this planet has a different lesson to fulfil for a specific place and time, for their inner expansion, growth and realization, no matter how it looks or is manifested in this material reality. For some people this experience we call life can be seen as anything but spiritual and is after all very much connected to the inner realization, but is operating on a more distant, different level of perception, ultimately to reach certain destination that is also valuable and important. On the other hand, there are experiences that were there as a predisposition at birth and take place in a life of an individual to experience more subtle layers of awareness, which is in most cases very hard to integrate and ground, to become a part in everyday experience and to function in a society as we know today, especially under established paradigm that is still very much in front of other alternatives, secret teachings and esoteric knowledge. And even there we can find many misconceptions that are wrongly perceived and can lead to very unbalanced place inside the mind, which is a process of unraveling and dissolving internal barriers, belief systems and perceptions we have learned - but are only temporary structures, even though, they seem very tangible.

What happens in most cases and especially at the beginning of a spiritual search, is that there is an excitement that arises and inexplicable yearning that comes along from a deep part of our being. So that feeling can arouse a reason for someone - trying to get closer to the nature of deeper reality and that, which is unknown.

With certain experiences and knowledge that can be obtained through reading about spiritual matters for example, then this mental breakthrough can happen, that is actually not on a level of energetic opening, but can be helpful for someone to put things into perspective and with that some clarity and understanding. It’s usually a first stage of intellect transformation. We can have a lot of “aha” moments in that, but that, which is unconsciously inside us, must be brought up onto the surface. It’s when mental understanding meets a core of a pattern that is buried inside our subconscious mind and we can find out that it has quite an energetic charge and can be felt as a physical symptom. So the time when we are ready to melt parts inside our unconscious mind, as a result, many phenomena can manifest into our awareness and consequently in our outer reality. That is when we realize the difference between thinking about a taste of something vs. having a bite. It all sounds fanciful, until we bump into it and see that this isn’t just a bunch of nice airy spiritual ideas, it has a really greedy experiential reality to it.

Experiences like that can be very frightening. For someone, this can happen in a more gentle and subtle way and for someone else, this can be much more extreme and profound in nature. It all depends from what level one is experiencing an expansion like that and a purpose behind it.

It’s a natural flow of the energy to push unconscious material onto the surface and can act out in a various ways. Many people can experience the same kind of pattern, but on another level of perception. One can find himself inside a psychological plane and another at more deeper level. After all, there is no distinction between them, just that there are layers on the path to the core and what inner compass (soul) has directed for someone to see. The first can not comprehend the experience of another, because his perception operates more on a surface and can be seen as too absurd or even unrealistic. In our society, a level this deep and a denial of it can manifest as mental illness, extreme ungroundedness or even as schizophrenic tendencies. The denied aspects can be buried to such an extent, that a person can not integrate it, to have a valuable experience. If that can happen, one can gain great insight and profound realization.

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Openings like that differentiate with one another and can manifest from the mind, heart or gut level and all have qualities as well as stages, so one can find himself in really interesting and bizarre situations. The things that we feel inside our bodies have the potential to transform into a visual objects or images and there is a danger to deny the experience so we can push it outside ourselves. We see that some feelings and mind states can have specific metamorphic form and when we become aware of that, we need to stay present, because sometimes those appearances can look pretty shocking. The intensity of the process may vary from time to time, so there is a shift in perception with everything we have known before and that we have taken for granted. We can hear inner sounds and frequencies and those can be connected with opening of the “Siddhis” (attainments that are the product of spiritual advancement) written in Sanskrit. You can feel as your body is dissolving into nothingness and as there are no boundaries or awareness of a physicality. It’s like jumping out of the plane and than grasping for something material.

Experience like that can sometimes end in dissociation and depersonalization of the self, which is a part of the brain’s natural defense mechanism to protect itself from intense trauma. All of that can be linked with exploring the power of attachments that are in us and the depths of it are enormous. The energy then opens the pathways in the nervous system and the result of this can be extreme sensitivity to external influences, toxins and everything we choose to put inside our body. We need to learn how to function with this new set up and how to let go. Dreams can intensify and become more vivid and can give us important revelations. Lucid dreaming is also a common phenomena and we learn that vibration is an essence of everything. Trouble arises when we are unable to let go of control and when our unconscious suppressions get triggered and a few other artificial concepts we buried within.

On the flip side, one can be rewarded with a great insight and understanding of the processes that secretly run behind the scene and are now revealed. What happens is that many thought patterns come to light, so with an intent we can change and reprogram them, to than achieve a different kind of outcome. This is a favorable time to brake some old habits, but first the detoxification must happen, not only on a physical level, but inside the mind as well.

Is this inner realization that a real spiritual path will “kill” us. It will destroy our little Id-entity ego mind, that always wants to pull us back in a place, where we feel safe and with no fear of desolation. Because of that, one can become spiritual bipolar, which means that there is a space within us and from here we can perceive both polarities of “dark” and “light”. The battle between being conscious and being unconscious. We are now aware that the whole world is in a sleeping state and that all is just a game of “hide and seek”. We can feel that there is an aliveness within us we were not aware of it before.

As Jim Morrison said; “We are the unborn living, the living dead”, meaning we are not fully awake, so our shadow is reflected back to us through life experiences.

Nevertheless, this whole energetic unfoldment is just a first stage of an awakening and may or may not lead to a true enlightenment.

And I don’t know what happens there. :)

Author: Luka Višnikar

Art by Alex Grey

Metaphysics of Rock&roll and the collective unconscious

Art by Leonora Carrington

 

It is obvious that music had always been a reflection of an inner personal experiences, observations and perceptions, for what had been happening in the contemporary culture of the specific era. The need that an individual possess — to create something musical, can be quite strongly suggested by an inside aspirations and can manifest in many forms. This internal urge which puts a musician into dimension of inner thoughts and feelings, rising out of his unconscious/subconscious mind — to then be expressed and to become recognized outside their own personal space, from which a specific piece of music was created.

 I want to talk about one of the most known and influential genre that is still relevant today for its controversy and so it was in the past few decades, especially because of the self and global realization potential, which can be found by deconstructing some aspects and is very much linked with our own psychological processes and the mysterious world behind the visible — day to day perception we perceive as reality. It’s Rock&Roll.

Using more of a Jungian approach I would like to show and reveal the metaphysical side/impact, that I believe is the ultimate goal and reason behind that or any other kind of artistic expression.

 A rock musician has the potential to tap and channel his own subconscious material, as well as the collective unconscious energies that are collected in this field of unexpressed emotions, experiences and perspectives, which are a byproduct of a deeper yearnings, searching for freedom, reflections etc. and repressed parts of our own psyche and society. There’s a generational gap, or lets say a misunderstanding and misinterpretation about the way this expressions were presented at a certain time period.

 Music is very powerful; It is uncontrollable. And when the performer is tapping into the unseen dimension of emotions and then puts it out there to be heard and seen — it becomes a great tool of expression, even for other people who didn’t have any direct influence on it for the time it was created. Those emotions and energies, which have found a home in the collective unconscious get very amplified, so in times where there were a lot of discord between people and the rules they place for us as a society, or any kind of inner conflict a man is facing with, an influential persona or a music group appear, to gather all of the energies from the collective state and then present it on the canvas of life — a manifestation of everything that is held back behind the curtain. It then becomes a moment of rebellion, frustration, realization. It can raise the awareness — it was always considered as a revolution.

 Musician represents a type of archetypal idea from our collective unconscious and it is through exploration that we can recognize parts of ourselves reflected by the artist.

 In the beginning the most important phenomena that “caused” rock to evolve was slavery, which brought together entirely different cultures. Then in 1950’s it develops and the original rock’n’roll stars were created (Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, etc.), emphasizing the power of the music and the emerging dominance of the rock’n’roll culture. By the early 1960s, this chapter then moves on to the arrival of Bob Dylan and protest folk rock. The inspiration was focused on individualism and widespread political awakening. Later the rebellious energies from Europe soon found its way to American shores in the wake of the Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Kinks, and The Who. This was also manifested as a clear desire for anti-war movement. Starting in the middle of the 60’s and then in the beginning of the 70’s it shifted to a sexual revolution, at the same time as the pornography industry started to take off. During this decades a drug use has begun and philosophical issues raised by drug use and abuse in general. This can be perceived as an unconscious aspect that was created, because the activity was soo high it could not brake through for people, to deal with it in the right way. It’s a propaganda that the solution is just to focus on “love and light” and not to recognize the “dark” aspect of the psyche, which many of the leaders in music industry were actually pretty aware of, but the crowd didn’t get it for what it is. So the end of the 70’s have started with Art rock, which later and in the beginning of the 80’s emerged into Punk, New wave and Heavy metal. It was more angrily oriented and this was like a reflection from past discontentment and failure which manifested inside the collective unconscious. So while this energies of rage were still present, there was this deep sense of yearning and the most basic question appeared; what is that, that we really feel. It was the beginning of the 90’s when a Grunge movement had begun. Many people say that this was the last true memorable moment of rock’n’roll expression, revolutionary in a larger sense.

Rock music is showing shadow material that needs to be reintegrated. It’s an unspoken message of rock’n’roll. This shadow is a byproduct of an emotional or seed energies that remaining in our subconscious minds and are then gathered into the collective soup, that later manifest in this 3D reality as an unconscious aspect we try to suppress. So the artist is a filter for those energies and then tries to mirror it back.

People don’t like the fact that there’s something in us we don’t want own up to, so we adamantly deny the existence of our own “dark” aspects. What can also happen, is that while the musician provides a persona that reflects a imagery — projection from the collective unconscious, we rarely can make sense of it.

 Kurt Cobain once said in an interview, that they as a band are very much unconscious of their own creative process and that the reason for the expression become more obvious later on. I would really like to put on a spot a shock rocker Marilyn Manson, whose way of expression goes to such an extreme, it’s soo bizarre and intended to push people’s buttons. Ironically this kind of performance can be judged as a disturbing act, but it’s just a reflection of a deeper unseen reality, which is intentionally presented in a very dark and mysterious way. What then the people the media does, is to put a blame on the artist and make them a scapegoat for everything that is happening in a culture.

We became very misguided as a society — from which many responses are born and are a natural reaction to a fallen, ridiculous, cut off world. Nevertheless, there is enormous potential to heal and integrate those pieces from our psyche and the collective unconscious.

 There is the very essence and critical part in a role musicians play today. All music throughout the ages serves two purposes. The first part we can recognize as a reflection of the outer world and the second part is the one, that is in the hands of aware musician and it has gotten past that, so the power of the music can uplift the spirit of the man. Those kind of artists aren’t just reflecting from the collective unconscious, but are trying to change the perception of other people and to illuminate that, what is still unrecognized and hidden from our own eyes. It is a power to bring people together. It is universal.

 Uni — Vers (The song of one)

 

Author: Luka Višnikar

"Survival of the fittest" - Fact or illusion?

"Survival of the fittest" is a phrase that originated from Darwinian evolutionary theory as a way of describing the mechanism of natural selection. So before I start, please don’t pick on me about it, because I’ll do this with a little bit of harshness and humor, just to make a point … and because I like it that way!

 So … do we really need to be selfish, egocentric, controlling and always ready for a fight - to take whatever we need for ourselves, with no empathy for other human beings nor for animals? Is this a norm, how we need to be on the top from everyone else, be “better”, posses more material things, deceive others for our own personal gain and all the bullshit we as people have created in this outer reality. Is this really normal biological, animalistic fact about human drive to survive, or is this just an illusion we were taught for the time we spent in primary schools, so that now has become a perfect mind controlling mechanism for global slavery? To make us fight for what we possess and what “we are”, to keep the false identity alive - just to justify all the crap we project onto others, to feed the Ego consciousness in order to bypass dark shit we want to avoid in ourselves.

There’s a lot that is fed to us as a truth of science and is actually just bs. It’s a collaboration that ensures the harmonious system in nature, but man chose to focus on competition. And so called The Selfish gene, which states that we are all inherently selfish bastards.

 I don’t want to get too much into a psychological view of this men, who was separated from his parents and sent to English boarding school, at the age of 4. We can have a sympathy, but that doesn’t mean we need to accept his bleak view on humanity. However there are also other sources that imply on Darwin who concluded that survival depends more on the ability to co-operate and to help other species than to dominate. So from that point of view the survival of the fittest is a propaganda. He also did conducted those experiments solely on animal and not humans.

 We are hardwired for love and collaboration and when we will come back to this place inside ourselves, we no longer think that abuse, exploitation and greed are acceptable. I think that is what they are afraid of, which is why they promote the selfish, competitive agenda and call it “Science and Truth”. And it is not a secret that today’s media, for example, are using a lot of primal human instincts to mask agenda behind it and play with those bloods cards, but we have forgotten that we hold a trump card in our hands!

It seems that it’s just an idea they invented - the idea of hierarchy, that one person is of more value than another. They did this to motivate people to work, so they make a profit for themselves. The reward was to move higher up the hierarchy and to be considered more important. Hierarchy is a human invention, as everything else is. A men made mind concept. So this is then manifested as a final belief that we can’t escape from being a human animal. Only the fittest genes survive to go on. If your genes are no good, you die and don’t get to procreate. Because that is obviously the most important and the only thing a human being has to achieve on this planet right?

 We are biologically designed to shit everywhere, but we don’t. We are biologically designed to fuck everywhere, but we don’t (although that would be a great proposition now and then). Those are examples of humans transcending genetic programming. And we have plenty of those. But it’s our destination to transcend certain patterns and to move forward evolutionary. That’s why we are here. We don’t do things as we did many hundred years ago and which are normal to us today.

 Around 17th century the western world split all the old philosophical questions into two categories; Questions of the inner world and questions of the outer world. They gave the inner world investigations to the church and outer world investigations to the science. Over time, the west and science forgot to bring this two investigation back together, so we are left with the idea that truth can only be known by studying the external reality. And also that we are only physical beings and that religion or spirituality is a load of nonsense (which of course can be and it has become in some fashion). In another words, we have all become separated from our inner experience, which is the original one, but because we have created collective unconscious as well, it is now presented to us as our primal fear to be faced with what’s inside.

 The science denies this inner experience and the most dangerous example of this is artificial intelligence. The idea that we can be physically modified to be “better” and to transcend the limitations of our genes in that way. But our genes do not control us, because we are not purely physical beings.

 Not to get into a lizard stuff conspiracy (it’s another topic), but I believe that all of this was influenced by a reptilian brain programming. Reptilian brain part is the oldest of the three (reptilian, limbic and neocortex) and is responsible for involuntary functions as a beating of the heart, the workings of our organs and our breathing. So one part of the brain can dominate and thus far it has been the reptilian brain. It is also very easy to manipulate and control this part of us, because it is very primal and contains a lot of aspects from everyday routine we live in and can be easily mixed up with and be manipulated with certain functions that operates deep inside our psyche. It can make us more territorial, greedy, hungry for power and wanting to dominate. Just look at how this mind controlling agendas has influenced our systems; government, society, education, politics, sports, business etc.

 So the only way there is, is to reconnect with our inner world and places inside of us and not to perceive just what is “out there”. And yes, the shit will start to fly around again. But that is the only way. We even don’t want to know what other options are.

And at the end it all depends on the story-teller. Just because some rigidly disturbed people create and promote their stories, doesn’t mean it’s true. Just think of how much suffering they had to go through themselves to feel so much drive to publish their theories. Every theory is just a belief. And every belief is a vibration! That’s why we resonate with something based on how we feel inside. But we have to take into consideration that there are layers of the psyche, so the truth can be covered with something that make us feel better in that particular moment - for as long as we need, to become conscious again.

Author: Luka Višnikar

Quotes from the past

1. I think that in certain situations the "assassination" of social morals can be necessary, even though it looks too absurd in that given moment. In many ways this impulse can arise from the subcounscious part in human psyche and is manifested in some form to gain a new perception. Sometimes it turns out that this morals are just made up system, which covers the true nature of things.

2. People will always grab the concept that is making them feel safe and not to destroy their current image/belief system.



3. Transpersonal experiences are not intellectual concepts.



4. There's a difference between positive thinking vs. positive attitude. It's a new age misconception about positivity and affirmations. You can be positive without hiding out negativity. It's like putting powder on an unhealed wound. Positive attitude is our natural state. It's an attitude of openness to everything and anything, including that which is "negative". We must realize that these are two sides of the same coin. In most cases this positive thoughts are directed by ego, so we are just adding layers on top of something else. To truly awaken you need to subtrack all the layers and see what's there first.



5. A healing path for someone can be seen as anything but that to someone else. This concept is not often understood, becouse people like to exclude the uncounscious aspect. What happens is that those things that had been hidden coming up onto the surface and are manifested in reality, which can be easily judged as well as compared with something that is or should be much more "spiritual". Whatever is inside must be accepted as it is.



6. We take everything for granted. And there are so many subtle ways to support that level of understanding. For someone who is searching and wanting to grow, peeling off layers, the words can change their meaning. What is abstract now becomes normal. Philosophy is not philosophy anymore. It's when rationality becomes a sickness. To see that what is presented is not random at all. You would be amazed by so many things we perceive as mundane if you could just shift your perception.



7. A revelation which hits you after awhile is that the beginning of spiritual path (in any way presented itself) was there just to seduce you and try to prepare you for the next thing. And don't ask me what that is.



8. Music is an expression, which finds it's way out of the unconscious.



9. Mind is a rebel!



10. You must understand that when we are talking about the real process of awakening, there will be times when people will missunderstand you. By realising that the most part of the human wholness is still subconscious, unconscious, darkness. And that doesn't make you a negative person. It's just the way things are. Your light must brake through those places and only then can really shine after the night falls.



11. There's a big difference between real awakening and the image ego likes to project upon that idea. The ego wants to awaken without loosing it's grip. And when that moment presents it's self in most cases the ego will say; Oh no, not that. I just want to party!



12. The truth which is difficult to acknowledge is that the world will not become a better place only by putting forward positivity, but it will change when each individual will set a light above that which is hidden, unconscious, buried and supressed within the psyche. Only then we can prevent what awaits to be manifested in the unseen.



13. Those who are unable to accept their own shadow will always see it in others.



14. You can't stay on surface all the time if you want to reach a deeper understanding. There's nothing more than superficial construct made by very safe idea. You need to dive deep into a dark cold ocean, where's nothing to grasp on, where pressure starts to desolve your little ego self. And yes, it will throw fear and maybe even terror at you. If you think it's wrong, don't seek it!



15. There is no right or wrong or even good or bad. To say that something is anything of that we really don't understand the core of deeper reality. Everything is just an action followed by reaction, but in that wrong or evil sense we must realize that this always comes from the unconscious part in ourselfs and that's why people label things and events as that, not knowing that they are just playing the game of projections.




Author: L.V.

Mirror, mirror on the wall! (Projection - reflection)

                                      

"Mirror, mirror on the wall" - a phase from a famous Disney story, which is actually a perfect representation of today’s culture we live in. A secret that has been kept for quiet a long time now and all the artificial concepts we have accepted as the one and only true reality - to mask the darkness we have created from the beginning of our civilization.

Nevertheless, we can say that this hide and seek game was in some way necessary from a deeper level of understanding and is here to give us another lesson to realize, what is the real purpose behind the visible and known - which is expansion of the human consciousness.

 All the philosophical and spiritual traditions, from Buddhism, Hinduism, shamanism, Taoism and many more. Any individual, who’s searching for the knowledge and wish to explore the inner dimensions of human psyche, knows that there are other layers of consciousness, not just what we perceive as everyday reality. Many came to a realization that the outside world is just a reflection of an inner world, so if we want to change something outside our self, we have to look within and see what’s there in the unconscious.

 We can realize this from many angles and ways; in personal life and more impersonal worldview as well. We as humans like to project everything that is happening in our world to external circumstances, which actually don’t exist.

With a presence of the spirit we mirroring back to our self an inner world and deeper layers of consciousness and that, what is eventually manifested in the outer reality. So everything we see outside our self - good or bad, is actually a reflection - projection. And when we realize that, the blame game we play here on this planet becomes somehow funny and stupid.

 For a human ego this is definitely the most hard thing to do, because from this mind consciousness perception everything happens somewhere outside and there must be someone to blame. What we must take into consideration, is that from a larger perspective we are all one. There are no distinctions between anything we see around us. If we could just lose a grip from this thing we call our mind, which is full of prejudices, false perceptions, full of false beliefs, that we received early in our childhood.

In our CULTure we’ve become very used to avoid and to put our own inner experiences to outside mechanisms. We could say that we are dancing around the void. For the individual this could become quite significant and can be manifested on the personal level as well. All dissatisfaction we perceive around us, every disease we call upon, psychological problems and much more are just a by-product of avoidance.

 There are many processes in the subconscious mind that dictates our life and the way we function. So the only way to change something that bothers us, is to look within our self and try to face those aspects that we created and absorbed as a child, to cover up our pain. We were basically taught to suppress what should and must be expressed in a healthy way, so that we don’t create this unconscious resistance to what is happening outside.

There’s a universal law that says; As within, So without! And it’s a learning lesson to realize, that you could not deepen your knowledge of the outside world without deepening your self-knowledge!

Today we see a flood of a new age movements that put their focus solely to reveal the dark side of secret societies, hidden agendas and all the machinations from the new world order etc., which is good in a way to expose an issue to a large group of people in order to rise awareness, but what this can bring along is a trap ego likes to fall in very easily. There is an unconscious temptation to be drawn in this conspiracy theories etc. just to avoid feeling our real feelings and to be present here and now in this moment. What is being overlooked here is the existence of collective unconsciousness which is fed by our own personal denial and manifests itself in this physical reality over and over again.

The only way we can move this forward is to go within and face our own inner reality, shift the energetic patterns we have created and denied in ourselves. There really is no point to blame and to be angry at the world, because we just contributing to the pendulum swing of good and evil, which is just a polarity game, but ultimately two sides of one and the same coin!

 Is this metaphor of “Jin and Jang” - two polarities that are one. If you go too far into the white you become the black. The universe is circular. There’s a really fine line between what’s here and what is there. And what is there is always reflecting itself from the core. So don’t put your hatred anywhere outside yourself, because you can become that which you fight.

 There’s a quote from a spiritual teacher that says; Your belief in evil is the measure of your ignorance. So there is always something that we do not yet understand, something we are very unconscious about. And this will continue to manifest itself in one or the other way, until we’ll finally realize what is behind the curtain of the invisible.

Author: Luka Višnikar